Saudi en­ergy min­is­ter says oil mar­ket on ‘right track’

ABU DHABI: Saudi Ara­bia’s en­ergy min­is­ter Khalid al Falih said on Sun­day the oil mar­ket is “on the right track” and will quickly re­turn to bal­ance, but oil pro­duc­ers are will­ing to do more if needed.

“If we look be­yond the noise of weekly data and spec­u­la­tors’ herd­like be­hav­iour, I re­main con­vinced that we’re on the right track, and that the oil mar­ket will quickly re­turn to bal­ance,” said Falih, ad­dress­ing an oil con­fer­ence in Abu Dhabi.

“If we find that more needs to be done, we will do so in uni­son with our Opec and non-opec part­ners where col­lab­o­ra­tion is es­sen­tial too,” he added.

The Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Pe­tro­leum Ex­port­ing Coun­tries (Opec), and other lead­ing global oil pro­duc­ers led by Rus­sia, agreed in De­cem­ber to cut their com­bined oil out­put by 1.2 mil­lion bar­rels per day start­ing from Jan­uary to pre­vent a sup­ply glut and boost sag­ging prices.

Al Falih said that sec­ondary sources sug­gest Opec pro­duc­tion in De­cem­ber was al­ready more than 600,000 bar­rels per day lower than in Novem­ber.

“We in Saudi Ara­bia went be­yond our com­mit­ment, and have low­ered both pro­duc­tion and ex­ports,” he said.

Al Falih later told re­porters that he sees no need for an ex­tra­or­di­nary Opec meet­ing be­fore April, when the group is set to de­cide its out­put pol­icy for the rest of 2019.